Good Afternoon, my Darling,
I am home from Pearl's. I see you are back, which always makes me happy. :) I guess you were busy taking pictures over the weekend, a good thing of course. And as usual, that's an excellent photo of your friend. It looks like it was maybe taken at the University. Are you still working at the lab, by any chance?
Well, at any rate, I am glad you are back! Glad you are taking pictures! :)
I've gotta take some pictures, too! This week, for sure. Either tomorrow or Wednesday (or maybe both) I will drive out to one of my favorite Santa Clarita trails, to see how they look all greened up, like Santa Susana was. And I'll try for some good shots.
Boy, am I glad that Super Bowl is over, lol. It's just sports, I know, and I've gotta get back to that mentality. It all just feels like a spectacle now, with the attention on commercials and a big halftime production. Those things are fun, and I'm certainly not a party pooper (anything but!), but when you factor in all the cheating and trickery in modern day sports, it kinda takes the fun out of it. And that's what it's supposed to be, is fun.
Anyway, it's a beautiful day, and we should have a great week ahead. I will be around most of the afternoon, except for half my walk.
I Love You, Sweet Baby! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
11:10 : Happy Late Night. I'm at Pearl's, writing a few minutes earlier than usual. That is quite a photo you posted a little while ago, really blurring the line between painting and photography. I remember a while back you had posted, over a period of time, several photos from a fantasy-themed series by another photographer. I can't remember if she was also English, but her photos incorporated all kinds of set design, lighting techniques, and merging of painting and photography.
Would you wanna try something in that vein at some point? You have a built-in talent for photographing models already, be they your friends or the professional model from the Milan show. It might be fun just to try something with materials at hand, or that you could easily purchase. Get one or more of your photogenic friends and experiment, with backdrops, lighting, makeup, props.
Way back, in 1986, me and my buddies tried something just for fun. We had a makeshift band at the time, with me on guitar, the late great Mr. D on bass and vocals, and another friend named Sean on drums. Sean is, like Mr. D, unfortunately also not with us anymore, but at the time, in the Summer of 1986, we were jamming in his garage. I'd been in bands with Dave since 1979, but Sean was just learning to play drums, which is why I say it was a makeshift band rather than a "real" one. But at any rate, we wanted to get creative and have fun, and if our music wasn't that great because of the drum situation, we figured we could still make the most of it by creating a cool image. At the time, we were listening to a ton of "first wave" Black Metal, original bands like Venom and Celtic Frost that Sean had introduced Dave and I to. He was listening to stuff like Christian Death and other really far out bands. He was an artist in his own right, he drew and wrote poetry, and was just an all around creative guy.
So we got an idea; let's deck out the garage, all gothic and Satanic, and we'll put makeup on and paint our fingernails black (or blue). Sean had things like a cow's skull laying around. He had lots of long black candles, wooden crosses and all kinds of stuff. He had a copy of The Satanic Bible.
Now, don't get me wrong, lol. In no way were we anything approaching real Satanists. I mean, Sean probably took it a tad more seriously than Dave and I did, but mostly what we were doing was having fun, just like you have fun when you go see a horror movie or visit a haunted house. Anyway, what ties in to what I am saying about photography, is that we really wanted to do some set decoration and makeup, for our little "Satanic" band, haha.
So we did. The "set" was mostly done by Sean, who took different colored pieces of cloth, big pieces, and draped them around the walls for a backdrop. And he created a black-draped shrine for his Satanic Bible and Necronomicon. He made a "fire pit" out of an old barbecue and held the cow's skull over it. And, he even dug a "grave" out in the backyard that we could lie in and rise out of.
Yeah, I know, I know. It makes us sound like a bunch of psychos. Some of our friends didn't "get it" and actually wouldn't visit us because they thought we were serious. We did a seance on Marilyn Monroe's birthday. Sean was a huge fan of hers and had her picture hanging on the garage wall. When we did the seance, the picture swung back and forth on it's hook. True story.
Of course, it could have been because a truck was driving by, but you never know........ :)
Anyway, we set all this stuff up one Summer day in 1986, and I - being the photographer of the group - took a few rolls of photos of the guys posing in our "set". And they came out pretty cool! You'd hardly know we were in a garage. It was certainly a low-budget look, and we barely spent a dime on anything but the film, but we got some cool shots.
Sean especially looked like a Black Metal Rock Star. He was a very theatrical guy. I have a couple of shots of him, that - when Marilyn Manson came on the scene in the early 90s - I said, "OMG! He looks just like Sean did in those pic we took in '86"! Dave and I used to say, and Grimsley said it too : "Sean invented Marilyn Manson".
Now, our photos are not even close to being in the technical or professional league of the shots you've posted from the English fashion photographers who have expanded into these new territories. But I relate my tale just to give an example of DIY creativity, born of a desire just to do something for fun and our own entertainment.
And I mention it just cause you never know what you might come up with, with your friends as models, and a few props, and some lighting effects, and a little set design. It doesn't have to cost much, and it can be just for fun, but it also might bring out unexpected results!
I will post now, then be back in a few minutes........
12:20am : Yeah, it was always about two things : being creative, and having fun. But it was really about having fun! We never said to each other, "let's be creative"! It was more like, "let's have some fun", and the creativity was born of the desire for fun. In those days, we were always hanging out together.
I will scan a few of those photos at some point in the future, and post 'em. I reiterate again that, don't worry, now that you are out of school, about things happening right away. "Things" meaning projects, professional prospects and aspirations, creative ideas - or any kind of inspiration at all.
Things rarely happen immediately. You will discover, as you go on in life, that there is a ton of time for everything. Time is a weird trip, and as you know it is one of my fascinations. Some weeks, months, years, seem to go by really fast. But conversely, within those periods, are smaller periods of time, hours, afternoons, days which seem really long.
Have you ever had a day where this happened and then that happened (maybe something totally different at a different location or with different people), and then, in the afternoon, something else happened?
Have you ever had a day like that, and you weren't even into the evening yet?
When that happens, you look back at the day's end, as you are lying in bed, and you think, "Man, what a day today was".....
And something inside you knows that it was different from an ordinary day.
Not just because of all the different things you did, but because of the way in which Time seemed to stretch out, and fold back on itself, and slow down......and almost to stop in places.
You may remember days from childhood that seem to have lasted "forever", and that is because of our concept of time, and how the perception of it it changes over our lives.
But at any rate, you, being an Artist, needs to know that you have all kinds of time at your disposal. Which is not to say you should ever take time for granted, of course not. But neither should you ever feel rushed, or a responsibility to "do something" just for the sake of doing it.
The most important thing it to constantly stay tuned into your inner power and, outwardly, to your sources of inspiration. Avoid distraction, but without becoming austere. It doesn't mean, "don't watch TV, don't talk or hang out with friends, don't go to the Mall".
It just means stay close to your inner sources and desire and be ready to have some fun, creatively, so that when the inspiration strikes, you will be ready.
Sweet Dreams, my Baby. I Love You! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
(see you in the morn)
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